How Your Spouse's Happiness Level Can (Forever) Influence Your Own

As anyone in a serious relationship knows, your partner's state of being affects yours too, a concept researchers call "interdependence." Quality of life, for example, tends to be similar for couples, since a person's health or cognitive functioning will help determine a significant other's general happiness. But here's something both spooky and soothing: A new study shows for married couples, a partner who has passed away continues to influence his or her spouse's quality of life for decades. That's according to findings just published in Psychological Science. Researchers combed longitudinal data on more than 3,000 couples, including more than 500 couples in which one spouse had died during the study. They weren't shocked to discover that Partner A's quality of life (or QOL) predicted both their own and their partner's QOL. But when they drilled down on the widows and widowers, they found that their QOL was still bound up in their deceased partners' latest QOL. Even after death, a loving, stable, happy partner, for example, could continue sharing that high QOL with a spouse. What's more, that finding held up regardless of other factors that might have played a role, including subjects' age, health, and the number of

As anyone in a serious relationship knows, your partner's state of being affects yours too, a concept researchers call "interdependence." Quality of life, for example, tends to be similar for couples, since a person's health or cognitive functioning will help determine a significant other's general happiness.

But here's something both spooky and soothing: A new study shows for married couples, a partner who has passed away continues to influence his or her spouse's quality of life for decades. That's according to findings just published in Psychological Science. Researchers combed longitudinal data on more than 3,000 couples, including more than 500 couples in which one spouse had died during the study. They weren't shocked to discover that Partner A's quality of life (or QOL) predicted both their own and their partner's QOL. But when they drilled down on the widows and widowers, they found that their QOL was still bound up in their deceased partners' latest QOL. Even after death, a loving, stable, happy partner, for example, could continue sharing that high QOL with a spouse.

What's more, that finding held up regardless of other factors that might have played a role, including subjects' age, health, and the number of years they'd been married (!); in fact, their QOL was just as interdependent as that of couples where both parties were still alive.

"Even though we lose the people we love, they remain with us, at least in part," lead researcher Kyle Bourassa, a Ph.D., student at the University of Arizona, said in a statement. "At some level, this accentuates how important relationships are for our well-being, but the findings cut two ways—if a participant's quality of life was low prior to his or her death, then this could take a negative toll on the partner's later quality of life as well."

The research didn't demonstrate exactly what caused the findings, but they suggest that thinking about a loved one who has died could spark the thoughts and feelings that fuel interdependence.

"What we want to know is this: Is just thinking about your partner enough to create the interdependence?" Bourassa said. "If so, how might we use this information to better help those who have lost their spouse?"

For now, it's a sweet reminder to keep pulling your and your partner's health, mood, and quality of life up—doing so now could help both of your forever.